


Mind How You Go

by Katzedecimal



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 03:16:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6498694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katzedecimal/pseuds/Katzedecimal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Do NOT read this if you have not read <i>The Shepherd's Crown.</i>  Major spoiler.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <i>You have to walk a lonesome desert.  You have to walk it all alone.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mind How You Go

**Author's Note:**

> This jumped into my head and begged to be written. Not kidding, it is a huge spoiler for _The Shepherd's Crown._

"When do we go?"

MADAM, WE HAVE ALREADY GONE.

"And where are we going?" 

SOME BELIEVE THEY GO TO SOME REWARD

The room faded away, leaving them standing on sand. Fine, cold, silver sand stretched out everywhere, under a cold, starless sky. 

_'You have to walk a lonesome desert and you have to walk it alone,'_ Granny Weatherwax recalled as she gazed out over the cold silver sand. "Why?" 

I'M SORRY?

"Why do I have to cross it? What's at the end of it?"

JUDGEMENT.

Granny frowned. "But we've already done that bit. Ha, reckon I did that bit when I was alive." She looked out over the sand, "And what direction--*" She looked around but she was alone. Death had vanished. "Right," she sighed, "The rest is up to me." 

She looked out across the sand and shook her head, "When Death Himself tells me I left the world better than I found it, I reckon that's judgement enough for me." She scuffed her boot through the sand. "Reward? Can't imagine any kind of 'reward.' I never did it for no rewards, never asked for any. Never wanted any. What kind of reward could a witch want?"

She looked up at the sky, starless, cloudless, as grey as the sand. She was a witch - had been a witch. She worked and did because work needed to be done and that's what witches did. She worked for old clothes and the barter of food, because that's how rural economies worked in the mountains. She'd never wanted a reward, no. No, all she, all any witch ever wanted was....

_Ah!_

And she turned and crossed the desert to the old ramshackle cottage with its garden and its bees and she put her hand on the door of the old shepherding hut and pushed... 

And an old woman sat by the woodstove with her sheepdogs at her feet, sucked a pull off her pipe and nodded, "That'll do."

"Sarah Aching," Granny Weatherwax said and bowed. 

"Esmerelda Weatherwax," Granny Aching said. She kicked out a chair on the other side of the stove. 

"Gytha Ogg calls me Esme. You may, too." Granny Weatherwax took off her hat, then sat down and poured a cup of tea from the pot on the stove hob then sighed and put her feet up. "What other reward could a witch want, but to go home and have a cup of tea and not have to jump up again five minutes later."

"And a pipe of Jolly Sailor, o'course," Granny Aching agreed.

"Of course," Granny Weatherwax nodded. She sipped her tea and sighed.


End file.
